


maybe this time

by quadrille



Category: Hellblazer, Hellblazer & Related Fandoms
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Family, Gen, Implied Sexual Content, Magic, What-If, Yuletide, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-10
Updated: 2015-12-10
Packaged: 2018-05-05 23:16:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5393891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quadrille/pseuds/quadrille
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vignettes. Sort-of-happy families and what-if’s, and how a girl follows in his footsteps. Scattered non-chronological character study for Constantine et al.</p>
            </blockquote>





	maybe this time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [navaan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/gifts).



> A Yuletide 2015 Treat, because I saw the request and just wanted to write all the things. ♥ Hope it fits the bill!

“John. _John_ , you fucker, wake up.”

There’s a heavy, steel-capped boot looming in his vision. Hard, cold floor pressed into his cheek. The smell of stale cigarettes. The ground is trembling. _Earthquake?_ he wonders. Impossible. No earthquakes in England.

Nah. It’s the engine. The tour bus is rumbling beneath them, juddering its way down the empty road, and John is barely able to grab onto a seat, levering himself into a sitting position along with a craterous yawn. Hair sticking up at odd angles, throat dry and parched and woolen, his tongue feeling about three sizes too large for his mouth.

“Where are we?” he asks, staring dazedly out of the windows. Dull countryside rolls past, grey and bleak and desolate. Up front, Chas twists in the driver’s seat to throw a laugh back in their direction.

“Up and at ‘em, sunshine. We’re three hours outside London, and your next gig’s in twelve hours.”

The frontman groans, hanging onto the side of the seat as the bus lurches again, leaping its way over a pothole in the ill-maintained streets.

“What did…” Vague memories are pressing at the corners of his pounding headache now. Beano with a little telekinetic trick, his drum sticks twirling in mid-air. Did that really happen?

Gary is curled in on himself in the back, face pressed against the cool glass of the window, looking distinctly green and queasy. John stretches until his back cracks, then lurches his way to the front, to collapse in the seat beside the driver. Chas wordlessly passes over a bottle of water, then turns his gaze back to the road.

***

_Those were the days, weren’t they? You were just a runaway and you found punk and punk found you. ‘cept it wasn’t enough, was it? Most people, you’d think drugs and sex and music would’ve been enough for them._

Gary, shut the fuck up. I’m trying to sleep.

_How can you sleep? There’s three other ghosts in this room. Perched on the edge of your bed. Can’t you see them?_

No. And thanks for the headsup. Real helpful, like.

_Not my fault you attract them like flies. Breaking everything you touch._

Look, I really appreciate the whole ghosts of Shitsmas past and all, but I’ve got an exorcism in Northumberland to tend to in the morning and do you know how miserable it’s going to be up there? I just…

_Alright._

_We’ll let you sleep._

_Alright._

***

They shared a flat, this close to being called squatters. Living off ramen with hot water from the same kettle they use for tea, instant soups made from powder, nutritionally bereft but cheap. Les is a pretty good busker. Meanwhile, Constantine fucking hates plying his trade for the uncaring public, and instead settles for picking pockets and seducing women twice his age, so he has a place to take a hot shower (the authorities shut off the water at the squat last week), a solid breakfast, a soft bed.

“I don’t understand how you keep pulling these women,” Gary remarks, astonished, shoving the glasses further up his nose as the teenaged punk comes sauntering back in in the morning. With his usual swagger, the spring in his step associated with having gotten laid. “I mean, you look like an alley rat, for god’s sake.”

John’s handsome enough beneath the rumpled clothes, the earring, the too-bleached hair. But there’s something else; some undefinable charisma thrumming beneath his skin—Gary isn’t certain if it’s just magic or just something inherently _Constantine_ or the supposed family curse or all of the above.

***

“Here you go, Francis,” he says solemnly.

“Excuse me?” The cab driver is staring down at the stack of metal on the table. There’s a bow on it.

“It’s a, erm, what’d the guy call it. The brake pads? You kept grousing about it, so I figured…”

“John, is this stolen?”

“What lack of faith! It was gifted to me, it was.” There’s that coy look, the one that means he had a lot of fun talking someone into this.

“I didn’t think you’d noticed,” Chas says. “Or even remembered what a brake pad was.”

“No, I still have got absolutely no bleeding idea. But I figure it might make up for… you know…” John waves his hand, vaguely.

Chas’ eyes turn a little harder then, a little more distant, as if he’s looking over his best friend’s shoulder and seeing an unpleasant memory instead. Maybe he is. “Nah, John, nothing’ll fucking make up for last week. The worm had _teeth_ , it was like a black hole that just kept chomping and chomping and I almost lost my hand before the big guy showed up, and you _know_ I need that for driving—”

John can feel the conversation sliding out of his grasp, and he’s quick to jump in. Cut that train of thought short, steer it onto better tracks. “Aw, c’mon then, let’s not dwell on the past. It’s Christmas.”

“I smelled like the sewer and my cab smelled like the Swamp Thing for five days straight,” Chas says dolefully. But he does pat the brake pad, as one does a faithful pet.

***

“‘ello, poppet,” he says. She laughs—a clear, bell-like sound of sheer delight, and John feels something warm loosen in his chest.

Was this what it was like, then? Happy families? Not just the dirty nappies and dead exhaustion and no sex and arguments shaking down the rafters and tossing slop onto a plate and hoping your husband won’t turn out to be an arsehole, but he does, they always do, and then you’re raising Gemma by yourself and your piece-of-shit brother isn’t even any help—

“Would you like to see a magic trick?” he asks mildly, but he can’t prevent that little satisfied curl at the corner of his lip, the standard Constantine smirk. (It’s been forever since he’s seen it on Cheryl’s face. Mostly she’s angry, and exhausted, mouth pressed into a thin line.) It isn’t real magic, of course, just sleight-of-hand, but by the way the little girl’s face lights up, it might as well be one and the same.

Her dark eyes track his agile hands, as he dips behind her and extracts a one-pound coin from her ear.

“ _How_ ,” Gemma breathes.

Then Cheryl’s voice, sharp from the kitchen. “John, what are you doing?”

He folds his hands away behind his back, but not before ruffling his niece’s hair. “Nothing. When the hell’s dinner?”

“Hell,” the girl repeats sombrely, an echo chamber, a mirror. _Shhhh_ , John mouths with an exaggerated motion, shushing theatrically.

***

He gives her a box of beginners’ magic for Christmas—just small things, handkerchiefs and coins and a deck of cards, but even that little is a mistake.

***

When he’s on stage, it’s one kind of adrenaline. Walking that knife’s edge of skill and hoping to God (or other attendant creatures; he once saw a minor Breton badger god in the woods) that he isn’t going to forget the lyrics. Reflexes twitching and hands running over the strings, his voice a raw scream out of his throat.

Mucous Membrane are terrible. But most of the bands are, and they’ve still got a small and loyal fanbase, a thrashing crowd of human flesh in front of them.

Sex is another kind of adrenaline: the way hands grab at his collar and drag him closer, teeth grazing his lip, feeling the hot kick in his abdomen as he’s pressed against the wall, John’s own hand drifting lower and lower until he’s dipping into the other man’s trousers, getting a liberal palmful and swallowing the sound of him gasping into his mouth.

And when he’s being scoured inside out with magic and he can feel it pulsing in his heartbeat, feel the laughing joyous rush of one more fucking demon outwitted and he’s walking along that line and he’s going to live one more day—that’s another kind, too.

***

_Have you ever listened to this record before? Christ, we really were terrible._

John is laughing to himself, boots up on the table in the grimy flat, vinyl player scraping away as its needle jumps in the groove and his own voice scratches its way back to him from across the decades.

Chas pokes his head into the doorway with a sour wince, hand clutching a mug of tea. (Gary flickers almost abashed out of view.) “Seriously? _This?_ Bring all those awful Membrane memories right on back, mate. Carrying that heavy, antiquated equipment. Lugging your amps. Lugging _you_ lot, too drunk or hungover to walk. Had to get you onto the bus. Did I ever tell you how many times you pissed yoursel—” 

“Aye, those were the days, wernit,” John says wistfully.

Chas groans, makes a noise, turns back into the kitchen.

***

Would you like to see a magic trick?

The electricity lights up his insides; his hands are shackled to the examining room table, and Dr. Huntoon scribbles another note on his clipboard.

***

What if. What if he’d given it all up sooner. What if she hadn’t—

The methanol is sharp and astringent on his tongue, burning a hole through his guts, his head throbbing and pounding with pain and it’s only made worse by the drink but at least it also leads to a hazy fog. He’s poison, his insides are poison.

His blood is poison.

It isn’t until he sees the King of the Vampires sizzling and burning from the inside out and trying feebly to crawl away from him that Constantine starts laughing and laughing and laughing and it’s like he can’t stop, he’s dislodged a tidal wave of hilarity and hysteria and despair and something else he can’t place.

> ( _What if_. He can almost see the Christmas sweater on him now, made by Cheryl, which means of course that one sleeve is longer than the other, and it’s blobby and misshapen and doesn’t do his figure any favours _whatsoever_. But at least it’s a gift. They’re having dinner together, and Kit’s on the other end of the table. The house is warm and bright, though the night is dark. His hands shaking around a Silk Cut, the flare of nicotine chasing down his veins.
> 
> But no magic.
> 
> No magic.
> 
> No magic. )

***

“Look, John, can you just…” His sister’s voice trails off mid-argument, falling into that pit of exhaustion, the one she’s permanently looking out of these days, blinking owlishly. “Just not be a prick, for once, and help?”

There’s a beat. The Constantines survey each other across the too-small kitchen. Then, finally, he steps forward (still reeking of smoke but he’s sober, at least there’s that), and presses a whiskery kiss to her cheek.

“Sure. Alright. Aye.”

And then he’s doing the dishes, his battered brown overcoat slung over one of the chairs, white shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbow, tie flipped over one shoulder. Scrubbing and scrubbing until they’re clean, jokingly admiring his own reflection in a sparkling plate.

(What he sees does give him pause. The stubble’s grown out, as it always does. But there’s a swollen black eye from where Chas’ last punch landed, and a still-healing cut from a _rakshasa_ above his temple. He can still remember the hot blood gushing into his eyes, blinding him, throwing his accuracy all off as he scraped together some sort of holding spell using his own blood as ink. His whole body a jumbled assemblage of parts. His face looks like bruised meat, a mess. God forbid, is this what Cheryl sees wavering on her doorstep each time? No wonder Chas’ wife hates him so very much.)

They’ve got hot cocoa ready when a sleepy Gemma comes tottering down the steps, yawning a craterous yawn, and scrambles into her uncle’s lap. There’s a blanket curled around her, tucked in at odd angles. Cartoons are on in the background, volume dampened to a low mumble.

His niece smells like soap, and peanut butter. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands, for once—he can do all sorts of tricks and magic and bring a man or woman to orgasm in five minutes, but this is something else entirely. _What do I do?_ says the lost look he’s giving his sister, and Cheryl looks like she’s about to burst out laughing at his misfortune, and she’s entirely unhelpful, she is, but then she pats John’s arm.

“She can doze off anywhere. Just let her.”

So Gemma sprawls out across him and the sofa, and John nurses his cup of coffee and watches Saturday morning cartoons. Gargamel casts a spell to turn the Smurfs into stone.

“That isn’t how it works,” he says aloud, more to himself, into his coffee.

***

His grown-up niece smells like spilled martini and perfume, her skirt hiked up too high in the backseat. (With a jolt, he realises that he’s slept with girls her own age.) “What were you _doing_?” John is leaning back over the seat, demanding. He wishes he could have driven her home like a responsible family member, but it’s Chas at the wheel, of course, like always.

Gemma’s mouth seals into a thin line (familiar, that), and she averts her head. She stares off at the distant lights of London passing by. The claustrophobic stink of the club seems to sit on her skin, but over and above that, Constantine still thinks he can taste the magic in the air, the rotten electric dazzling tempting savouring taste of it.

***

They’re opening Christmas presents. He threw out the old box of tricks a few days ago, deciding against it, having chosen to wrap a bedraggled teddy bear instead.

There’s warmth in the little flat, with the cold world outside. Last week, he prevented a tsi-noo demon from sucking out the lifeforce of an entire hospital wing of sleeping children, slurping it up like so much milkshake.

This week, he’s sleeping in Cheryl’s guest room and Gemma is eight years old and he hasn’t touched magic (nor had to run for his life) in seven days and he’s thinking maybe, _maybe this time_.


End file.
